I want to write in a style that is totally not my own. That is foreign and unfamiliar so that by writing, I will find facets of myself that I don’t think I have.

I have been writing since I knew what it was to write. I wrote for no one except myself. It’s perhaps the only thing I can do or have any confidence in. So much of who I am is wrapped in what I write that I am unable to separate myself from my work as is necessary.

At the same time though, writing is infinitely scary. And perhaps a little sacred. I constantly hear stories happening around me but I find myself set apart from them because my function is not to live a story but to record it. This is just like when I was younger I actively sought heartbreak because pain was the greatest inspiration. I don’t know when that changed but as I grow older, it is experience that becomes a major influence.

For instance, memory. I can now think back, select one memory, hold it apart from the rest, take it apart and examine its structure. What I felt at that moment, the colour of the sky at the moment, the ground, the green and the wind - I can remember all that and it’s inexplicable and so powerful. However, words swarm around me like a stream, dense with unfamiliar phrases and slick with trickster words and to harness that stream - sometimes I think I am fooling myself.

I am getting maudlin but there is so much to think about. So much to ponder and examine. This is why I love reading. I can take a sentence and let it unfurl, feel its power in the whole of the story. I hope the new year lets me explore writing in different ways, in new ways and styles. I shall experiment writing with just nouns or poetry full of verbs.